Faculty Profile

PhD

• 2007: Ph D: Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
• Title of the thesis: The Fiction of Childhood: Toys and Gender in Anglo–American Novels of the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

MPhil

• 2001: M Phil: Department of English, University of Hyderabad
• Title of the dissertation: “Searching for Alice's Sisters: A Study of Girlhood in English Novels, 1850-1915”

Post-graduation & Graduation

• 1997- 1998: Post Graduate Bachelor in Journalism: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad
• 1995 – 1997: M A: Department of English, University of Hyderabad
• 1992 – 1995: B A: Andhra University, Visakhapatnam

Dr Usha Mudiganti has taught English language and literature in colleges across India. Her first job was at the International Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. She has also taught undergraduate students in Kerala and Mumbai. She was a visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.Her previous assignment involved teaching Classical Literature to undergraduate students of the Honours programme in English at Delhi University.She has also worked as a consultant for Action Aid, Save the Children and CRY.

Dr Usha Mudiganti teaches English and is associated with the School of Letters and the School of Undergraduate Studies. She is also a deputy Dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies of her university. She teaches courses in children’s literature, British and American literatures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and literatures of the Indian subcontinent at the undergraduate, postgraduate and research levels. Her research interests are: study of childhoods in literature, gender studies and popular culture studies.

Her interest in the study of childhood began during her Master’s degree in English at the University of Hyderabad. Through her M Phil dissertation at the University of Hyderabad, she has highlighted the lack of substantial depictions of girlhood even in bildungsroman novels with girl protagonists in late Victorian and Early Modern England. She obtained her Ph D degree in 2007 from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi for her thesis on the reification of childhood.

• Won a research grant at the Indo-American Centre for International Studies (formerly American Studies Research Centre and now known as the Osmania University Centre for International Programmes) at Hyderabad in 2001
• Secured University Rank 3 in the Post Graduate Bachelor in Journalism examination in May 1998

• Mudiganti, U. Toying with Childhood: Tracing the Child - Toy Bond from Britain and America to India. (2022). London and New Delhi: Routledge
• Mudiganti, U. (2019). Only Connect: Some Reflections on Teaching. In Vahali, H.O. (ED.). A Song Called Teaching: Ebbs and Flows of Experiential and Empathetic Pedagogies. New Delhi: Aakar Books. 67 - 71.
• Mudiganti, U. (2019). I am not a Sahib: Boys and Masculinity in Kipling’s Indian Fiction. In Varma, P and Pradhan, A. (Eds.). Kipling and Yeats at 150: Retrospectives/Perspectives. New Delhi: Routledge. 227- 241.
• Mudiganti, U. (2017). One Part Woman: Controversial Challenge to Hegemonic Masculinity. The IACLALS Journal, 3, 21-28.
• Mudiganti, U. (2017, August 14). In the continuous battlefield [Review of the book Bheda by Naik]. Outlook Magazine, 58.
• Mudiganti, U. (2017, November 27). Villages beyond the railhead [Review of the book Tell me a long, long story edited by M. Krishnan]. Outlook Magazine, 73.
• Mudiganti, U. (2017, February 19). Idylls of the pragmatist [Review of the book Don’t run, my love by E. Kire]. Outlook Magazine, 70.
• Mudiganti, U. (2016, September 12). A Dangerous Binary [Review of the book The Unsafe Sex by Nalini Natarajan]. Book Review, XL, 7, 23-24.
• Mudiganti, Usha. (2009, January – February) “Alice in BPOland”. Biblio. Vol. XIV, Nos. 1&2.
• Mudiganti, U. (2006, January). “Ellora in the Rain”. “Ekalokam: Dayapuram Patrika”. 37.
• Mudiganti, U. (2004, July- August). “The Myth Exposed”. Diary: India International Centre. Vol. XVIII, No. 4.
• Mudiganti, U. (2002, July- August). “‘La absurdum’”. Diary: India International Centre. Vol. XVI, No.4.
• Mudiganti, U. (1999, January/ February). “Curing Cacographers”. Teacher Plus. No. 58.

• “Through the Lens of Childhood” International Conference on “Kipling in India: India in Kipling at the IIAS Shimla. 26 -28 April, 2016.
• “Using Regalia for Women’s Reform: A Study of Kashibai Kanitkar’s The Palanquin Tassel” at the Annual American Comparative Literature Association Conference at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. March 17 – 20, 2016.
• “One Part Woman’s Controversial Challenge to Hegemonic Masculinity”. Conference on Right to Write: The Culture of Literary Controversies and Controversial Literatures. Warangal. Organised by Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and Kakatiya University, Warangal. January 22-24, 2016.
• “Diverse Reception of Bhakti: Juxtaposing Akkamahadevi’s Vachanas with Mirabai’s Bhajans”. Seminar on Interrogating Manuscript Traditions. Delhi. March 24 and March 25, 2015. Organised by Programmes in English, and Centre for Community Knowledge of Ambedkar University Delhi and Delhi Comparatists.
• Was part of the organising team of a seminar “Interrogating Manuscript Traditions” at Ambedkar University Delhi on 24 -25 March, 2015.
• “Virtual Reality and the New Hero in Children’s Literature”. 13th International Pragmatics Conference. September 8 – September 13, 2015. New Delhi. Organised by the International Pragmatics Association.
• “Finding a Suitable Boy: Indian Adaptations of Jane Austen’s Novels”. Conference on Comparative Cultural Studies: Towards New Postcolonial Paradigms. January 27 – 29, 2011. Thiruvananthapuram. Organised by Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Kerala.
• “Sisterhood in Listening Now”. National Seminar on Gender Studies: Matriarchal Assertiveness in Literatures. Department of English, Government Arts College, Salem, Tamil Nadu. January 21 and 22, 2010.
• “Writing for the ‘Other’”. National Seminar on “What’s in a Booker? . Organised by the Osmania University Centre for International Programmes, Hyderabad. September 15-16, 2009.

Invited Lectures/ Talks:

• “Representation of Gender in Popular Culture in India: The Case of Dangal” in the Study Abroad Programme of the Department of Psychology of the University of Alabama at Birmingham organised at Ambedkar University Delhi in May 16, 2017.
• “Gender and Culture in India: The Controversy over Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman” in the Study Abroad Programme of the Department of Psychology of the University of Alabama at Birmingham organised at the Department of HSS, IIT-Delhi on May 19, 2015.
• “The Child in Victorian Literature” in the International Seminar Series @ Ramjas at Ramjas College, Delhi University, September, 25, 2013.